


no one hopes to hear the bagman call

by elithewho



Category: Babylon Berlin (TV)
Genre: Cunnilingus, Drug Use, F/M, Pining, Post-Season/Series 02, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prostitution, Sexual Content, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-09 00:22:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17396573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elithewho/pseuds/elithewho
Summary: Will you carry me all the way back to the city?It was funny, she seemed to be the one carrying him now.





	no one hopes to hear the bagman call

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks, as ever, to Morgan for the beta :3
> 
> Title is from "Rain in Soho" by the Mountain Goats.

Helga went back to Cologne on a Saturday. On Sunday, Gereon could hear the church bells ringing, painfully loud, digging into his skull like a club full of needles. They were funeral bells. They had sounded the same that long-ago day when Helga had married Anno. The sun shone, cold and colorless, the same empty white that filled up his mind when he tried to forget. 

He got a new room. A smaller room, just for himself. The curtains were thin, translucent. They reminded him of skin stretched tight and the daylight pouring through them turned his stomach. 

He had beer with breakfast most days, more than he should have. He felt dizzy and lightheaded by the time he arrived at the station. If anyone noticed, it was Charlotte. She’d give him hard, probing looks sometimes. It should have made him feel worse, but her quiet concern actually alleviated some tension in him. Made him feel less lonely. 

Charlotte, at least, seemed happy. She was bright and eager every morning, ready to start work, her badge never far from her hand as though just the feel of it in her palm gave her a boost. She’d a hand in her pocket from time to time, smile to herself softly. Gereon imagined the badge there, her fingertips ghosting over it, imparting warmth to her hand like a talisman. 

That gave him some satisfaction to know that she was content. More than content. At least someone could be. For Gereon, life was that black tunnel and the evil truth at the end of it. What he was, what he had done. Anno’s voice still followed him into that darkness, into his dreams. A shot of morphine before bed tempered the insurrection but it was getting harder to beat it back. Harder to control the tremors that sometimes made it difficult to write. He dreaded the night almost as much as the day. 

Home meant loneliness and the morphine vial. The more he took at night, the less he could take during the day, when he really needed it. He sought another form of oblivion. 

Alcohol was less kind than morphine, it was harsh and stomach-churning, but it did a fine job. In a pinch. He didn’t know why he’d visit Moka Efti again, not for his own vices, but the answer greeted him inside. _Charlotte._

If he’d been thinking of her, he pretended he hadn’t been. It was easier that way. 

Gereon only saw her two or three beers in and she caught his eye like flames would, bright and beautiful and dangerous. Compared to that morning at the station, at night she was all fire. Lit by flashes of color, her skin glowing, he thought of the hard glitter of a music box. Mirror shards, reflecting everything but herself. 

“Gereon!” she called out to him and he made his way through the crowd. 

She was laughing, and it struck him that a moment ago she hadn’t been. 

“Dance with me?” he shouted over the music and she nodded, hair bright with color. Her eyes were dark, rimmed in smudged kohl, her lips painted into a red rosebud. 

Charlotte had the same wild, energetic spirit as the last time he’d danced with her. If there was something lost and sad about her eyes, he blamed it on the blue light that slid over them. She had been a champagne bubble at the station that morning, bright and effervescent. Here she should be the same. 

But the music slowed and she was in his arms, but happened to stop there, their hands clasped together. Her head nearly tipped onto his shoulder, but she turned away instead. Her perfume was strong in his nose. Rose, lily of the valley. He thought of the bottle, its hard, fluted edges, glistening. He felt the beaded fabric of her dress against his wrist, just barely brushing. 

“I don’t know why I'm here either,” she muttered and he felt the vibration of her words. “Then again, they don’t pay me as much as you.” 

She smiled, like she expected him to laugh at her, but Gereon could not. Of course they didn’t. 

By the time the next song started, a waiter came by and offered them champagne. Gereon refused. Then he offered Charlotte a book of matches. She turned to Gereon, apologetic. 

“I won’t be long.” And she was gone in the crowd. 

Gereon lost the desire to keep dancing, even as the rhythm resounded in his blood, pounded away in his ears. It made him sick to think of her in those back rooms, fucked by some fat old man. Like Bruno... 

He clutched the bar, suddenly unwell. He had known, even then, searching for Charlotte frantically. The madame had greeted Bruno like a friend. Not like a cop. Like a customer. But Charlotte was her own person, she could do whatever she pleased. It shouldn’t bother him so much. 

He went home. Home to the cramped bedsit and his morphine vial, holding him the way a mother would, sweet and gentle. The whitest oblivion. 

 

The more he took at night, the less he could take during the day. Should take. 

Charlotte had not looked abashed at all when she left him on the dancefloor and she hadn’t looked abashed the next morning either. She talked to him normally, excited to discuss the case, asking if he wanted lunch. He watched her across the room, filing papers. She looked different but entirely the same: face scrubbed clean, in a blouse and plus fours instead of a loose, glittering dress. He thought she didn’t look any more or less beautiful. 

Evening fell around them and Gereon should have left with the rest of them, but he lingered. Home was his sad, empty bed and memories of Helga and his morphine vial for his only company. He took it out, knowing he should wait, use it later to fall asleep, but his head pounded, his hands shook. He barely felt the bite of the needle, only the sweet nothingness. It was like going to sleep. 

The syringe was still in his arm with Charlotte found him. Still in the drug’s grip, he could only watch her remove the needle, gather it with the morphine vial into its case and roll down his sleeve. She even buttoned his cuff. He could feel that, at least, her fingers on his wrist. 

“It’s late,” she said softly and her hand twitched towards his face, as if to brush the hair away. He could feel it tickling his forehead. She thought better of it, let her hand drop. 

Gereon pushed it away himself. He didn’t shake, but he was clumsy, slow. 

“Why are you still here?” he muttered as she helped him to stand. He found he needed to lean on her too much, using her shoulder and his desk to steady himself. 

Charlotte only shrugged and Gereon gripped her shoulder. She had more in her life than this job, surely? But he thought of her dancing, the joy sliding off her face as soon as the music stopped. The feel of her in his arms. Solid, cold, like when he pulled her from the lake. 

“Let’s get you home,” she said, not looking at him. 

She smelled different, like soap and fresh skin. Maybe there was a hint of powdery rose, but he probably imagined it. Her body was so close to his and he recalled vividly when she had cried for Stefan and Gereon comforted her here, right here. He could still feel the warmth of her breath on his face. 

He completed the motion that they had interrupted all those months ago. Her mouth was just as warm, so real and familiar, like he had been there before. He grabbed at her, clumsy still, desperate like he was drowning now and not her. But it was only seconds later that she pushed him away. 

Gereon didn’t feel the slap, only his neck twisting back and then seeing Charlotte’s furious expression. 

“Is that what you – you think, I am _your_ whore now?” She was gone before he could respond. Her shoes tip-tapped down the empty hall, like rain drumming the roof. 

There was a faint tang of copper in his mouth. His legs wobbled and he sunk to the floor, unable to stand without her supporting him. 

_Your_ whore. He didn’t want her to be anyone’s whore, but maybe she expected him to. He had been selfishly only thinking of himself that night, leaving her at Moka Efti and he imagined her now, finishing with her customer and coming to find him again. To find him gone. He only could imagine what she thought. 

He imagined a bruised peach, only a little brown and battered on the outside, but with a core surrounded by black and rotten flesh. Riddled with worms. He thought he could feel them squirming around his own core, pulsating with every beat of his heart. 

Sweat dampened his shirt. He tongued the inside of his cheek, felt a slight sting. He could struggle to his feet then, put on his jacket and hat and make his unsteady way home. He knew for certain what he would find there. 

 

Charlotte was much the same the next day. And the next. She was cheerful, friendly, bright. Eager to work. It was difficult to tell if she was being short with him or was simply distracted by the case they were working on. A man drowned in the Spree. 

At the morgue, Charlotte was attentive and professional, scribbling away in her notebook and standing firm when the coroner tried to make her leave. He still did not care for women in the morgue, even with a police badge. Gereon insisted she stay. 

The coroner described the man’s death, but Gereon’s eyes were pulled to Charlotte. She looked calm, collected, but her cheeks were very pale. She scribbled a note, brow furrowed, but her fingers trembled just barely. 

Gereon kept the observation to himself. But he watched her closely. She seemed bothered the rest of the day. Distracted. 

The dead man’s skin had been sickly grey mottled with blue. Bloated, stretched and tearing like an overfilled balloon. His face barely looked human. The smell strong enough to make Gereon feel faint, his heart stutter madly, the fine tremble in his hands maddening. He clenched his fists, desperate to keep the panic at bay. It swam up before his eyes along with the memories of Charlotte’s face in the ghastly dark gloom of the lake, how she gasped, mouth and lungs filling with water. Her eyes widening as if in surprise. She’d been dead weight when he pulled her to the surface, her skin white as bone, lips grey and cold under his. Like a dead woman’s. 

“Charlotte,” he said softly to her while back at the station. It was nearing the end of the day. Friday night, the lights coming on outside like amber jewels. “Do you need –” 

“I’m fine,” she rebuffed him easily, turning around with a pert click of her heels. She gathered her coat and hat, the green bright and glistening like a bird’s wing. 

Gereon had no real desire to dance that night. But he didn’t know where else to look for her. He’d stopped by the Jänickes’ to look for her, but Mr. Jänicke had intimated through a note that Charlotte no longer stayed with them. No wonder she needed extra money. 

The music that night put his teeth on edge. He felt close to cracking a filling as he stood at the bar, eyes scanning the crowd. He noticed Charlotte first this time. Her face held none of the joy that the music promised, her limbs twisting, hips undulating. She noticed him as the music faded and her brow furrowed. 

“You look tired,” he said when she came up to him. He hadn’t entirely expected her to. 

Her mouth twisted, eyes dropping away from him. “I told you before I was fine,” she answered, still looking away from him. 

“I didn’t believe it then, either.” He took her hand. It didn’t shake, but she felt cold, not like she’d just been dancing. 

She gave him a hard, biting look. “Alright, let’s go then.” She grabbed his wrist, pulled him towards the doors in the back. 

Gereon shook his head. “Not here.” 

Her eyes looked huge as they left the club. The dark smudges of pencil only made her look sadder, her lips looked painted in fresh blood instead of the flush of arousal. 

At his place, Charlotte shrugged off her jacket. Her dress had looked red in the dim light of the club with its shifting colors but in his room it was a deep, rusty ochre. All the glittering beads looked like water droplets. He thought she might shiver, shake like a dragonfly dislodging raindrops from her wings. 

“How do you want me?” she said as Gereon hung up their coats and hats. “Demure, like a virgin? Or fierce like a wildcat? I could hurt you, if you want.” 

Gereon’s heart plummeted. The drop of a body into its grave. “I don’t want that,” he said slowly and Charlotte tossed back her head, looking annoyed. 

“Anything you want. You can call me Helga.” 

He sucked in air sharply, hissing through his teeth like a snake rearing to strike. “Don’t – Charlotte –” 

She sat on his bed, long legs stretching out. She looked ashamed, at least, for that. 

“I don’t want that from you,” he finally bit out. His hands were shaking and he angrily pushed back his hair. It was suddenly too hot in his room and he tugged restlessly at his necktie, popping free the buttons of his collar. 

He looked back at Charlotte. She was sitting straighter now, hands folded primly. 

“What then?” 

“Can’t I be worried about you? Your hands, in the morgue...” 

She brushed that aside with a flick of her wrist. “I’ll be fine –” 

“I thought the same,” Gereon breathed out. His lungs felt constricted, a sharp pain settled in the center of his chest. He went to touch her shoulder, but his hands were shaking madly, uncontrollable. “Let me help.” 

“You need help more than me,” she said, expression tight with worry now. “Here, sit.” 

Unsteadily, Gereon settled on the bed beside her but she was already up, heading for his coat by the door. She fished around in his pockets until she found his poach of morphine. Sweat was sticky on his forehead, his heart beating hard enough to crack his ribs. The fear that engulfed him like a gas mask over his mouth. 

“Show me how,” she said, back to the Charlotte he’d known in that very first moment, helping him off the filthy bathroom floor, pouring drugs into his feeble mouth. 

She rolled up his sleeve for him and he showed her how to find a vein. The pinch was like a lover’s kiss, bliss at the end of needle. “Oh Gereon,” he heard her whisper. “I’m sorry. I thought –” 

He hushed her with a clumsy finger to her lips. He felt the sticky cling of her lipstick, like her mouth wasn’t ready to let him go. “I’m an idiot, a fool –” he slurred and his head had nowhere to go but her shoulder. Lily and rose assailed his senses and he breathed in deeper, nose brushing her collarbone. 

His eyes crossed and he drifted off into an empty cloud of white. It felt like hours later when he returned; still hazy, still resting on Charlotte’s shoulder. He was breathing hard, his cheek nearer to her breast now. He couldn’t move, heart beating so slow and steady he might have awoken from the deepest sleep. It came to him that Charlotte was stroking his hair. 

_Will you carry me all the way back to the city?_ It was funny, she seemed to be the one carrying him now. 

Her heartbeat, slow and even, matched the pace of his breathing. He felt the soft thump against his cheek and he wanted to sink between her breasts and fall asleep there. The sound of his name was a sweet whisper as she pushed him back, made him lie fully on the bed. Gereon already missed her warmth. 

Charlotte’s hands seemed to move very quickly as she undressed him, just enough to be comfortable. He barely registered what she was doing until she pulled his shirt over his face and he was only in his underclothes. 

When she laid beside him, cheek on his pillow, it surprised him. She didn’t seem real, not in the half light of the dimmed lamps and his own morphine-drenched haze. Her cheek looked pale and if he touched her she might have been cold, her mouth tasting of lakewater. Still, he reached for her, before he even knew he was doing it. Her mouth still held the faintest trace of schnapps, the waxy bitterness of lipstick. It made his teeth ache. The kiss ended before it really began, before he could touch her tongue with his and then he was falling back into the ivory white pit, the veil of smoke closing over him. 

 

There’s a feeling to never wanting to wake up. The world behind his eyelids was too comfortable, too warm. Daylight threatened to intercede and he stayed very still, let the ache in his bones creep up around him until he couldn’t lay there anymore. 

Charlotte was already gone. She felt like a phantom from a dream, but the pillow was indented where her head had laid and the sheets smelled like her. Gereon let his head drop onto the thin cotton, seeking the faint impression of her perfume that still lingered. It had changed from hours on her skin, the lily of the valley blooming with warmth. The rest of her was gone. 

At the station, she treated him politely enough. As she would any other colleague. It made him cringe, how she would not look at him directly. But they had work to do. Gereon could push unpleasant things aside in order to focus on the task at hand, at least for a little while. He’d been doing it for years. 

But the coming days brought an almost unbearable tension. That night lay between them, always lurking, unspoken and unacknowledged. He wanted to ask her what had really happened, to confirm his hazy, uncertain memories. That sweet kiss may have only been a dream, half snatched from his waking memory. 

“Charlotte,” he said cautiously, as the day came to a close. 

At first she didn’t look at him. But when she did, it was with a probing curiosity. They were in his office, no one else around. He thought about that first kiss. The day Stefan died. 

“I wanted to say –” he started and then continued after swallowing thickly. “I never meant for you to think –” 

“That you wanted to buy my company?” Charlotte finished for him and she did not look embarrassed. She didn’t look angry either. “I'm sorry I jumped to that conclusion.” She looked away. “Sorry... for what I said.” 

Gereon touched her wrist. All he wanted was to know they weren’t at odds anymore. Or at least he told himself that’s all he wanted. There were other things he wanted, wanted very badly, but he couldn’t say it. 

A feather could have fallen and made a sound. He could hear her breathing. Charlotte turned her wrist and then he was holding her hand. The unbearable tension popped like a circus balloon and he was kissing her again, her mouth opening easily like she’d been waiting for him to do it. 

If his hands trembled, it wasn’t from stress. He felt calm as he went down on his knees, Charlotte backed up against his desk. She made a sound of surprise in her throat as he kissed her belly, pulled her shirt from the waistband of her trousers to nuzzle bare skin. She was so soft there, so soft everywhere. Her hands settled in his hair, steadying him as he unbuttoned her trousers and nudged them down. Charlotte toed off her shoes, kicked them aside as Gereon nosed the edge of her cotton tap pants. He looked up at her, imploringly. 

Her expression was the ideal of gentleness. He could have fallen asleep inside her eyes. Instead, he tugged down her tap pants and pushed apart her thighs just enough to kiss her there, between her legs. She was so sweet, damp and slick on his tongue. Just knowing she was enjoying this made him shudder, cock stiffening and pushing against the fabric of his trousers. Her hand tightened its grip in his hair, pulling lightly. His knees ached, but her breathy moans spurred him on. He flicked her clit with his tongue, letting her reactions guide him. Twice, three times, then her leg was shaking and she pulled his hair hard enough to hurt, gasping sharply as she came. 

How sweet it was to lay his cheek on her trembling thigh. Her grip in his hair softened and she cupped the back of his neck tenderly. 

“Up, up,” she muttered shakily and Gereon stood on aching legs, knee cracking as he unbent it. 

She was grinning as she pushed him into his chair, and naked from the waist down, straddled him. He let out a little puff of air as her weight settled on him and she kissed him, deep and eager, hands working at the buttons on his shirt. He could feel the warmth of her body through his clothes, her cunt nudged up tight against his prick. His hips twitched, restlessly rubbing into her and she moaned softly, teeth tugging his lower lip. 

Charlotte got his shirt off as he stripped her down to her camisole. She worked on his trousers as he kissed the shape of her nipples through the thin cotton. Time seemed to slip and slide amorphously. Like water, he couldn’t hold its shape. She was on top of him, he was inside her. The clutch of her cunt made his eyes roll back and he buried his face in her neck. She felt better than morphine. She felt like waking up to something beautiful. 

The chair beneath them squeaked and trembled with their combined movements. She worked her hips against his, breath heavy in his ears. He could feel her heartbeat again, frenzied but not with fear. When he came inside her, he saw black sparks. A darkness like slipping out of a dream. 

Gereon was still breathing harshly when he came back to himself. It was not like waking up from a morphine daze; he felt light and energized instead of groggy. Charlotte was smiling, her cheeks pink. He pushed her hair off her face, kissed her softly, warm and chaste. 

“If I asked you to come home with me, would you be insulted?” he said. 

She shook her head, cupped his face in her hands. Gereon’s knuckles grazed her thigh. 

“Let’s go, before anyone finds us like this,” she said, sliding off his lap. She bent to pick up her shirt. 

“Wait,” he said, stopping her. “I just want to look at you.” 

He’d never thought Charlotte was capable of blushing. Maybe she was still flushed from their exertions, but her small smile was almost bashful and he took her in, so lovely and solid and alive. 

“Let’s go,” she said, touching his hand. “You can look at me tomorrow. I promise.”


End file.
